Olive Cotton
Teacup Ballet
1935

Olive Cotton (1911- ). Her home at Hornsby was filled with the stimulating influences of music and art. In 1929, at the age of 18, she became a member of the Sydney Camera Club and the Photographic Society of New South Wales. She graduated from Sydney University with a BA, majoring in English and maths. She joined Max Dupain's studio. She married Dupain in 1939, separating two years later. During the war years she ran Dupain's studio while he was doing war service. In 1946, after her marriage to Ross McInerney, Olive moved to Cowra, continuing to photograph the landscape and her family, and run a photographic studio. In the early '80s she began to print from the many negatives amassed over the years (continuing until the studio closed mid '90s). It was fortunate this coincided with a re-evaluation of the contribution made by women artists and photographers to our cultural richness. Olive is now recognised as a major contributor to Australian photography.